You open registration for a free members’ preview night, and within an hour one household has grabbed twelve spots across four transactions. Or a limited-capacity behind-the-scenes tour sells out, and half the names on the roster belong to the same two people. The question that follows is always the same: can Altru stop one customer from buying more than their share online?
The honest answer is that a hard per-customer cap is difficult to enforce on any public web sale, in Altru or anywhere else, because the system only knows what the buyer types in. What you can do is combine a few Altru settings, some clear wording, and a simple review routine so that over-buying becomes rare and easy to correct.
Why “one per person” is harder than it sounds
Online, a “customer” is usually just a name and an email address. Someone who wants extra tickets can check out twice, use a spouse’s email, or misspell their own name. Even if a sales tool counts purchases per email, it can’t reliably tell that two emails belong to the same person.
There are two separate limits people usually mean, and it helps to know which one you need:
- Per-transaction limits: no more than a set number of tickets in one order. This is the easier one.
- Per-person limits across orders: no more than a set number for the same customer, no matter how many times they check out. This is the hard one.
Check what your Altru setup supports
Altru gives you real control over capacity for programs and events, and over which price types appear on your web forms. Whether your version and configuration let you cap quantity per order on a specific web form, or tie an online purchase to a signed-in constituent and limit by that record, is something to confirm rather than assume. The safest way is to build a test event in a sandbox (or a hidden, unpublished event in production), try ordering more than you want to allow, and see what happens. If the behavior isn’t clear, ask Blackbaud support directly and describe the exact scenario.
While you’re testing, look at these levers:
- Capacity on the event or program. Set it to what you can actually host, not what the room technically holds. A tight capacity limits damage even if someone over-buys.
- Price types on the web form. Offer only the price types you want sold online. Dropping a “Group” or “Additional guest” price type online removes an easy path to bulk buying.
- Member-only pricing or access. For member events, tying the offer to membership narrows the pool of buyers and gives you a record to check against.
- Split allocations. For very limited programs, release a portion online and hold the rest for phone or desk sales, where staff can apply the limit in person.
Make the limit visible before checkout
A surprising amount of over-buying is innocent. People buy for friends, or assume the limit is per order. State the rule plainly on the event page and in the confirmation email: “Limit two registrations per household. Additional registrations will be canceled and refunded.” Clear terms give staff something to point to when they cancel extras, and they deter most of the people who would game the system.
Catch repeat buyers after the sale
Since prevention at checkout is imperfect, the most dependable control is a quick review before the event. In Altru, build a query on the event’s registrations or sales that groups by constituent and shows a count. Then:
- Sort by count and look at anyone over your limit.
- Add address and last name to catch households buying under different first names or emails.
- Run it daily for high-demand events, or once right after sales open.
This works best when your constituent data is clean. Duplicate records split one person’s purchases across two profiles, so the count looks fine when it isn’t. If your database has a lot of duplicates, merging them will make these reviews far more accurate.
Handling the extras
Decide in advance what happens when you find someone over the limit. Common choices are refunding the newest transactions, contacting the buyer to ask which registrations to keep, or releasing the spots to a waitlist. Whatever you choose, apply it consistently and use the same wording you published on the event page, so the conversation stays short.
Free events need extra care
Free registrations get abused more than paid ones, because there’s no cost to grabbing extra spots. Two things help. First, a small refundable deposit or nominal fee changes behavior a lot, though it also adds refund work. Second, overbook slightly based on your typical no-show rate, so unused spots don’t leave the room half empty. Track actual attendance against registrations for a few events to find a number you trust.
Where Social Good fits
Most of the controls above live in Altru and in your own policies. If you’re also reworking how those sales look and feel online, Checkouts is a branded, mobile-friendly checkout for tickets, memberships, and donations that replaces Altru web forms and writes the data back to Altru, so your post-sale queries and reviews work the same way.
Quick answers
Can I stop someone from using a second email to buy more?
Not reliably at checkout. A post-sale review by name and address is the practical way to catch it.
Is a per-order limit enough?
For most general admission, yes. For scarce, high-demand programs, pair it with a published per-household rule and a review query.
